To Prove Yourself
by skywalker05
Summary: AU. Luke is denied leadership of the Jedi Academy. Confidence shaken, he seeks purpose, but the preserved Sith Exar Kun is still set to rise again...
1. Chapter 1

_A/N:This story may not be updated very quickly, but I hope you enjoy what there is and summer is coming. Right now I have no idea where the plot is going, so any thoughts on that would be nice...it won't be as angsty as this all the time. Surgeon General's Warning: I am the original Mara-basher. She just might die again in this one. The plot bunny for this was thrown thrashing into my arms by a guy working at the Waldenbooks in the local mall, Mark I think, who maybe has no idea. Oh yeah, and a little bit by Moag, too. _

**T**he coruscations of many eyes looked down on the rainbow-decked half-circle of senators seated where Emperor Palpatine had once addressed his closest political supporters.

Leia Organa Solo gazed perhaps with more intensity than all of them, and smoothed her white dress with her left hand, the one loose of Han's reassuring grip, as a final and unexpected nervous gesture.

Mon Mothma stood three tiers down, and infused her words with effortless regal kindness as Palpatine had his with calculating evil. "After our careful decision within the senate and our precious remaining Jedi Knights, that essential order shall be reconvened." Soft applause suffused the chamber. "They will begin here in a annex of the Republic, lead by Senior Knight Tionne of Huan'a."

The slender, dark-complexioned woman stood and began to speak fluidly, backed by more applause. Leia and Han's hands remained clasped, and though politeness urged her to clap as well, she appreciated her husband's stiffness. Luke sat in his place with the gathered Jedi--she remembered the names Gantoris, Streen, Cilghal, Kyle--with his face set, blue eyes settled on Tionne, but somehow sunken.

**L**uke could sense Leia's inner retreat, and how she reflected most of it from himself. In Han and Leia's clean, pastel apartment he, the Solos, Mon Mothma and Garm Bel Iblis sat casually at the communal room's couches. Luke sat facing the two Rebellion leaders, touching his fingertips lightly together between his eyes. They had invited him to say, "Tell me why."

Bel Iblis spoke, "None of you are up to the standards we believe the old Jedi held. I am sorry, Skywalker, but--your heroic resume pales slightly with the realization that Palpatine, cursed be his name, was killed by Darth Vader and not yourself. "

Luke had to nod.

"It's all right, Luke." Leia laid a hand on his.

He could say, "You're right." The best thing for all the Jedi, for the new order he had cultivated, was to realize that it would perhaps be better pruned and brought into blossom by someone else.

**L**ater he stood on the small balcony of his own apartment, looking out at the ever-lit night of Coruscant and wondering why the grime wafting from below smelled so similar to old sand on Tatooine. It reminded him of home he had not had since --and this apartment had only recently become his true residence after years of living on ships and military bases, just like Han and Leia and all of his friends, stopping on Coruscant to flit about the monetary gifts the new government was more than willing to give them.

Bel Iblis' words spurned a tragic list of achievement-failures in his head.

_Destroyed the first Death Star. Without knowing how to do it except to leave my work to Ben and the Force._

_Fought Darth Vader on Cloud City. Minus one hand. Plus one revelation that almost killed me itself._

_Tracked Han. As an official Rebel mission, nothing to do with the Force._

_Released Leia and Han from Jabba the Hutt. One Jedi Knight and a freighter's crew of experienced Rebel soldiers against mercenaries and bounty hunters, but mostly fat toadies._

_Fought Vader. Lost. Fought the Emperor, lost. Vader killed his former master to _rescue _me._

_Survived the Nightsisters. With Tenenial and Isolder, which makes that not count immediately._

_Resigned from the military because I _don't like the military. _It is _boring.

_Fought Thrawn's crazed Jedi. C'baoth brought that ceiling down on himself and Mara killed the clone._

_Maybe they're _right.

He slept uneasily that night.


	2. Chapter 2

II

A fragmentary boulder of tanned, square ruins fell from its place and crashed into the verdant jungle of Yavin IV, crushing a fragrant copse of blueleaf undergrowth and a nest of young piranha beetles.

Exar Kun, Dark Lord of the extinct Sith whose skeleton reposed underground here, had not smelled flowering plants, blood, or a strong divergence in the Force for four thousand years.


	3. Chapter 3

III

Luke awoke groggily the next morning , He splashed the cool, stale city water over himself, then dressed in short boots, dark pants, and a tunic and jacket set not unlike his formal, borrowed clothes from the battle at Yavin victory ceremony.

_Remember the ecstatic congratulations? Remember the rainstorm, and I stood out there until Han and Leia found me and didn't know what to think. Was it a storm on Yavin IV I dreamt about last night?_

Early sunlight came in with the way he had set the windows, natural-gentle, pink and yellow pastel off the constant traffic that the windows also served to muffle. It slowed down at night, but never stopped.

Thoughts of checking on Tionne and her beginnings of an academy brought sour almost-fear rising up in Luke seemingly and unpleasantly without source. But what else to _do_? He could not explain the trapped feeling except in metaphor; like a dog without a master, like a krayt dragon without a hoard to guard, like a soldier without a war who could only jump at the footfalls of invisible clones...

Han would be away today, playing tourist with that Force-powerful teen Kyp whom he had rescued. Wedge would be protecting the Imperial scientists Qwi Xux...no. His mission with her had not started; he would be supervising his last job as demolitions-droid crew in the formerly war-zone parts of the city.

Luke set his X-Wing down during Wedge's lunch break. After terse, friendly greetings they sat on the fighter craft's wide wing together. Asked for an update as conversation started, Luke saw that as permission to rant. "...now I feel so useless, Wedge! But they're right. I don't want to study the Jedi arts on my own; it hurts too much. And I can't even be sure I'm doing it right."

"I think you're putting too much thought into one setback, Luke. Just find something to do. You've never had a career."

"You know I can't. The Force is...addictive as a spice. Something I can't trust myself to see is keeping me from confidence."

Wedge looked askance. "I don't think it's so much about psychology. You just need to develop some political skills. There's nothing wrong with you just because the senate says you're not fit for one job."

Luke would not believe that, not with the layers and layers of confusions wreathing his thoughts. He was kind enough to not tell Wedge how much he could not understand.


	4. Chapter 4

Luke took his X-Wing up through the sky until the clouds released his jetspray and blue sky became slow black space. He kept going up until black space got empty and up could not be told from any other direction in the vicinity of gleaming bronze Coruscant. Clearance chattering in his earpiece. From the missile bays he released six ovoid silver drones in a horizontal circle around his X-Wing. As they cruised out to a set distance away he dialed down the inertial dampener and took all power from navigation to shields and lasers, breathing always breathing as if regulated, always feeling the universe as if free to love it.

Wait. The time ticked down in green numerals.

Zero. Luke had the old starfighter pointed almost straight up and to 1:00 before the signal met the drones and their small lasers fired. Two peeled apart as he came down on them with fire shouting from the four guns. A third exploded as he angled onto its accelerating trajectory while tipping the X-Wing for the starboard shields to catch another pair's barrage from the distance. The Force painted lines of occurrence and effect against the color of the universe–he _knew _to spin away from re-angled shots, and the Coruscant planet-horizon, just close enough to be named so, tilted with exhilarating sudden slow violence.

He slalomed through two drones to score on the third remaining, all out of intuition. The two remaining drones rearranged. He slid back, loosed laser blasts at the second, and the first had risen fast so he turned wide to have fun with it. _Just forget. Submerge. Peace._

The second drone still hovered at the first point of his arc. Luke cursed himself and tried to dissipate futile embarrasment. It was a mistiming purely of his, bad shooting. He powered toward the first drone, juked with it, made it blossom into fire.

_I've lost the touch._

With an intense look he tracked the final target as it sped across the viewfield overhead.

_They're right._

He whipped the X-Wing in chase after it before it fired.

_I have to find breathing room. ...visit Lando._

His lasers tracked the drone and it wove right.

_He's always somewhere new._

Luke closed his eyes and stalled the X-Wing. The drone whipped around in reaction and laser bolts screamed into it second safter he thumbed the firing stud.

The Force whispered of passed success.


	5. Chapter 5

V

Exar Kun's traumatized, disembodied spirit floated about the former temples and building-cities of Yavin IV and his Massassi slaves and found them empty, the potency in their scripted walls killed when no living being could read it.

His powerful anger, tinged with triumph that he lived at all, spread violently through the local Force.

No beings with comparable power reflected it back at him in any nearby star systems. Closer, slower scan showed few passing through on the slingshot routes of hyperspace either.

Suddenly, to the Sith Master Exar Kun who slowly regained his memories of life, the galaxy seemed ever so small.


	6. Chapter 6

VI

Luke met Leia in the indigo-colored hallways of the Senate, that huge mushroom-shaped building cushioned by floors and kilometers of other structures. He wearied of telling his swirling thoughts to her politician's face as she greeted passing dignitaries and endlessly reassured him with how financially stable he was and how he "could do anything you want."

As her route steered them toward the burgeoning Jedi academy, a calm annex, he could sense the candidates' potent minds and their hodgepodge thoughts' jitters/serenity/excitement. Luke stopped in his tracks, piqued by the silence.

Leia looked up at him, her sharp face holding the mix of ferocity and caring she had always been able to achieve.

"It's no good taking me here, Leia. I don't want to see them." _Please._

"Maybe you'll feel better! See that they can succeed."

Words failed him until he softly admitted, "I already know they can go on without me."

She sighed, and forced her hand around one of his. "I'm sorry. I voted for you. None of them were _there_...on Endor, or Bespin, after."

Stoically he said, "Pain does not make a man powerful."

She shook her had. He could see in the cogs of her mind an unwillingness, and a fear, to use trained political persuasion-maneuvers on him. "Look, I didn't bring you here for torture. Mara Jade, if you remember her, is meeting us here. She needs to finalize arrangements with the smuggler's organization before joining the Jedi. These arrangements happen to go through Lando."

Luke vaguely remembered an intense woman who tried too hard not to hide her fit femininity. "Lando will be thrilled."

Leia nodded, smiled. He could see through the compelling relaxation, but followed her anyway a few more steps. In this the next hallway Luke caught a glimpse of a room where the Jedi students sat in a circle each with a little item sitting in front of them. He sensed their concentration, inhibition, closeness, a break in the circle...broken...

Mara Jade stomped out of the room, wearing a surly smile and a complex green bodysuit. Luke stepped aside for she and Leia to greet each other, unable to rise or fall out of his introspective state. Mara's former life as darkside assassin had been mostly covered over and soothed, but he did not want to deal with it now. Nor to stand just over the threshold of this door...he led the two women away, drawing his white cloak close.

Leia maneuvered them into a friendlier configuration like a mother hen as the siblings retraced their steps through the Senate hub. "Lando is stationed on a planet called Utapau." She said. "He plans on mining mineral deposits in a certain section of sinkholes. Just be careful this doesn't turn into another adventure..."

Luke said, "It's just a visit."

Leia touched his near hand again. "Well be careful."

Mara said, "The coordinates?"

"Have been downloaded into your snubfighters."

The Jedi trainee nodded.


	7. Chapter 7

VII

An X-Wing and its simpler Incom cousin a Headhunter dropped from the clear sky and cruised above the pocked plans of Utapau, glinting with martial silver. Leathery birds rose singing and tilting away from their wake, while identical huge shadows overlapped them fleetly in slow soars.

**D**eep in one of the many expansive sinkholes, Luke juggled altitude with his ship's footpedals against the tumultuous wind as he eased his flightsuit's helmet off and watched Mara's Headhunter being drawn into a skeletal-looking docking bay built like a fungus against the sandy cliff wall. When it was retracted completely a second eased out and Luke set down on it.

Nearer to the wall the metal-threatening gusts diminished only slightly. No sign showed of mining technology, only a fanned ledge of small docking bays and the suggestion of starship maintenance equipment in the caves beyond the ledge proper. It all smelled briny as Luke jumped down from his ship slightly foggy from a lengthy trance, almost overwhelmingly alive after Coruscant. The chorus of natural life sang sweeter and louder to him than billions of sentients had.

Lando emerged from a tunnel as Luke and Mara stared about at the vertically tapering landscape around them. A phalanx of small aliens--Utai, the HoloNet entry Luke had studied called them--accompanied the trim human and then scurried ahead of him, dragging fuel hoses and diagnostic readers for the two starfighters.

Luke placed some credits into one's proffered hand as Lando swept toward them.

"Welcome! Miss Jade," Lando kissed her hand. "and Luke."

Luke nodded to his friend's triumphant smile. "Ah, new operation, Lando?" He tried to sound glib, unconcerned.

"Actually...you'll see. If neither of you mystics have anything else to do, I'll show you some of the sites of this remarkable planet."

Mara wrested her hand away from Lando's. "No. I have nothing better to do."

**L**ando lead his visitors alone ledges and thin, beautiful tunnels to an enormous open space, explaining his new venture all the while. Luke kept silent, smelled the brine and unique smells, and tried to concentrate on the freedom of walking without any Jedi self-persuasion.

Lando walked and gestured amicably. "I originally came here to investigate the minerals in these underground seas. Rare ores, very lucrative. Some of the Utapauans, those're the tall ones, told me that what they would really support building is tourism--in sane amounts of course. When I saw the creatures--"

With a flourishing wave he stopped at the cavernous stable's opening. "They use these varactyls and dactillions for transportation."

Just ahead of them giant lizard-birds craned their necks iridescent with feathers and fixed on each human with beady, intelligent eyes. Luke sensed a dog-class loyalty and mind in them. On the other side, similar dark green and rust beasts with four spindly legs and two-meter-long beaks in bald avian heads sat in the company of little Utai.

"I didn't know you liked animals." Mara said.

"I don't particularly." replied Lando. "But I know these things could--will!-- draw _people_."

Luke had never had more than a casual interest in creatures either, but his pilot's heart thrilled as one of the dactillions spread its sixth pair of limbs, great thin leather falcon-wings, and plunged off the side of the cliff into the sunlight with an Utai in its saddle. _I can fly anything._

He turned to Lando. "Can I rent one of those flyers?"

"I'm sure you can." He said. "Talk to a wrangler."

Luke haggled with an Utai and received for his credits instructions for and reins to one of the dactillions. He could not remember the last animal he had worked with, but this one's thoughts were almost clear enough to speak to.

It _launched _with the Jedi leaning into its simple saddle's movement--Luke embraced the rush. Many X-Wing lengths away at the opposite curve of the sinkhole smaller beasts soared on their extended finger-sails. Luke leaned the reins to turn the dactillion a sightseeing distance from the cliff and it swept across a rhythm of winds, fluidly tucked up its four strange legs, balanced the tiller-beak angled.

Luke let the reins go and fed his hands the warm snakeskin neck just before him, and asked the dactillion's permission to see through its eyes.

**T**hey soared indeed; Utai burbled praise of the beginner's skill when they returned. To Luke the ride was nothing like an X-Wing's; the wind beat against his face and the inertia had its way with each turn, each sweeping triangle of wing--

When he returned to the lizard-stables his legs ached a dull pain. Expressively he thanked the Utai wrangler who met him, and it indicated for him to follow where it lead, winding up to Lando's apartment. Surely this new scheme of his would draw people--

In the shaded trails Luke's own lack of purpose reassailed him with its nagging.

_Pleasure is only situation, depending on the light and wind or shadows and stillness, where once contentment was not..._


	8. Chapter 8

_to_** Revan: **_erm...you'll see where Mara's subplot goes. Thanks for the review and following._

VIII

Luke dreamt of ghosts, half-bone phantasmal things screaming of the frightening disjointedness of the body without living consciousness, and then of Hoth or some such warplace, white caves where monsters chased him and sapped the Force, sapped Obi-Wan, when he appeared as help, into a truly dead and pale thing...

Lando and Mara Jade heard Luke screaming a few times out of the dreams, where they sat below the sleeping lofts in the evening, attempting to sanely discuss the New Republic's friendly but disorganized (and unfunded!) view of 'steal from the rich give to the poor' business the likes of which Mara, Lando, Talon Karrde and Han Solo had sometimes dealt in.

Lando looked up from a blue map of shipping lanes, but Mara kept her gaze down and the thoughts behind the green calculating; the two had been judging current senator's views of an allied smugglers' organization. Screaming tended to shatter concentration, so she gritted her teeth and tried to concentrate harder.

Lando's repeated glances at Luke's unseen form piqued her. "He has to deal with his power, Calrissian. The shift in the new Jedi's leadership must cause some deep ripples in the Force."

She could tell that Lando was not that irritated by returning his eyes to her. Not _wanting_, just liking, and unafraid. Mara thought, _ugh_...

He said, casually, "Do you feel any of it."

"No. Look, I don't know that I want to be a Jedi."

"You have that power."

"It's not that simple. I never had _Jedi power._" She grimaced, remembering, the dark side.

"I understand." Said Lando, and lay one of his smooth-skinned hands over hers across the galaxy map. "We're still dealing with that...gray side, I shall say, now, in this plan--"

"Quit trying, gambler!" Mara's expression flared as she pulled her hand quickly away.

Lando stood up in exasperation. "I'm not just that, you stuck-up vampress!" He exited, gold-lined cape swirling dramatically against the simple stone walls.

Mara stayed watching the doorway a while longer. Not many had the guts to speak rashly to her, because not many would she hesitate in harming...


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: Dearest Korrd, why ever would Mara wanting to kill Luke set them up as being a good couple? Anything I write will be light romance, to get Miss. Jade out of the way. Thanks for the following. _

IX

Exar Kun's mind flew like a windjammer from its nest and caught glimpses of a behemoth--no, a high-tech tracker--no, a few university students' space yacht, so far beyond the spacelane seekers of his era _(and era it was, he saw the whole stretch, he wanted to wear time)--_jumping out of hyperspace and floating past Yavin IV on its way to elsewhere.

Exar Kun, disembodied and unknowing of his own power/frailty, rode the bow wave of that starship and began to sense the order of things.


	10. Chapter 10

X

The next day, almost unknowing of the events of his dream and unknowing of their ramifications in other people's social lives, Luke sat in the sun on a balcony like a long shadow.

He tried to relax, to soak in the heat.

It was almost a success--but being able to think of nothing reminded him of the source of all mortal nothing: purposelessness.

As he sleepily meandered the familiar currents of the Force just like his senses of touch, taste, smell and hearing functioned now, an ugly taint showed very much too close by.

Luke opened his eyes. The small, oval balcony held only the chair and footstool, and tan walls with a painting of a few faded avians--and from between the serene cracks oozed an inky black.

As Luke sat up and focused the black changed from a noun to an adjective; black cloak on a pale human form. A craggy, young face of a human male--and skeletal hands, smoky body, all residing still and semisolid under the cloak.

It said with an oily version of a formal Coruscanti or similar accent, "Found. Beacon--I have found the Jedi Master to slay."

Luke stared at the thing and waited. "I am no Jedi Master."

"Then you do not know your own potential. But I am in no mood for recruiting followers at this moment--"

Luke summoned his courage, his fight, but it all came out thus and crackly; "I am no Jedi Master."

The apparition raised spectral hands, jerked them down again, and spat iridescent Force lightning that caught Luke at the throat. He stood there against it and clenched his fists--his hair blew in a false wind. Thought remained; _what is this? Who? When--?_

The lightning subsided and Luke gasped, coughed sparks that fell into his hands.

"Interesting." said the dark one. "You resist your own powers? What have they done to you? What can they not do?"

Luke's thoughts surfaced only in his deep eyes; _they can not promise me success, nor certainty of my friends'. _He sensed an old presence, old old like things krayt dragons dug up in excavation of their lairs, and angry, and powerful.

"What do you want?" Luke rasped, stock-still, gallows still.

"Tell me this! Where are the Sith Lords?"

"Standing in front of me, unless some other faction likes black costumes and lightning."

"No more than myself?"

_I killed-- _"I watched the last two die."

'Then you are Jedi!" The old old presence crowed. "Fight me for your masses, Jedi!"

_There are no masses. _"No."

"Why?"

Luke did not have an answer beyond his previous thought of lack of masses, but somehow he was not worthy, somehow he had sunk there, to that he was not worthy to fight.

The dark one paced to an angle and engulfed him in shivering neon hurt again--Luke felt himself fall and braced wrists to elbows.

"Get up!"

Luke saw only the tan wall in front of him, his curled hand(s) supporting the failing rest of his body. "There are no Jedi Masters left to counter you."

Exar Kun opened himself up in his victory, and Luke closed his eyes as his last thought before the lightning jittered, lanced, through even the dead nerves already overloaded, even the midi-chlorians--

The heavy Utapauan-designed chair flew through the air in his peripheral vision and the old old Sith recoiled in his mind, trying to hold its body, even the look of its body, together. With proximity of the corpses in his dream Luke wanted to retch, and painfully rolled over onto his back instead.

"Hey!" Lando Calrissian shouted as his battle-cry various exclamations in various languages.

Exar Kun Force-pushed Lando and Mara Jade down the stairs behind Luke, and then dissipated--no, flew, left the pretense of body behind.

Luke's tears surprised him as they burned inside and then cooled tracks down his cheeks.


	11. Chapter 11

XI

Mara and Lando supported each other up the curved, carved stairs as Luke eased himself up, gingerly to a cross-legged position. It surprised him how Mara realized she wanted comfort from the completely unexpected attack--it surprised her too, and Luke removed himself from her vein of emotion though his own was worse. Now he could sense the flight of Exar Kun--long-dead (_Alive! Alive and detached though not collapsing down on me_) Sith Master (_Lord; they called themselves not only organized but overarching the common people._) of days when Yavin IV's temples had been made out of only rock. He climbed to a refuge in _a starship_...yes, he left trails through the atmosphere.

Luke's resolve surged. He had fallen and would rise again--would make himself rise again--

Quickly he told Lando, "Wait here. I'm turning pirate." Perhaps Mara Jade caught more subtleties of plan; Luke pondered as he jogged down the steps, out the apartment and onto the landing dock in the sunlight and full whipping wind .

It was for justice that he now ran, for good-against-evil that was his true career.

_Hero by career--_passed through his mind and he had no time for those ramifications. For justice he moved now without doubt.

_But justice cannot regain me Tionne's Jedi Academy._

He arced his X-Wing up in a sharp climb that brought his stabilizers into red, but the Force told him closer, infinitely more accurate parameters. He roared out in time to see a cargo ship, something rather _Pulsar Skate _shaped, drift away toward hyperspace speed.

Luke dialed full power to his engines and leapt upon the cargo ship like a sand panther on a pocket hare. Signaling came out from it as he buzzed the narrow bay and he infused the Force casually into his reply;

"Unidentified X-Wing, this is _Difree, _explain yourself please!"

"You are in danger, _Difree_. Let me aboard."

Mumbled, "Let him aboard."

In the X-Wing clipped, the guns inches from the larger ship's dusky russet sides. Luke leapt out when the energy lock completed its shift from red to green, cast about, _shouted_.

**"What are you following, unMaster Jedi?"**

"You, Exar Kun!" Some atmosphere instability as a door opened into the ship's living quarters flung Luke's hair against his face.

**"UnMaster Jedi."**

Audibly, literally, the taunt echoed in Luke's mind and fogged his thoughts. He shoved up barriers erected by years of peace layered over years of heartache. Kun seemed a force of nature to him, an epoch; and humans had gotten very good at denying time.

A rib of metal peeled from his own ship's side and raced toward him. Luke caught it in his robotic hand, and only some edge poked into the synthskin. A floor panel tore up, revealing no secret hiding place but plenty of wires; Luke flung it back, gently, to its former place.

Exar Kun's disincarnate voice said, **"I do not need to test your Force skill." **Luke had heard or sensed arrogance from enemies before. **"You know why I call you unMaster! Where are your pupils?" **

Luke attempted to put confidence in the thought-words, "_Under the care of another_."

The presence of Exar Kun disappeared.

Luke thought, _No._

In that moment, he had lead the spirit to seek not a Master, but a conclave.

Coruscant.

Tionne.

And Leia.


	12. Chapter 12

XII

The mind of Exar Kun had once pondered deep thoughts, but also it had once embraced the light side. He now felt himself above thinking; he felt himself above himself.

He felt himself to be an epoch.

Speeding toward his destination through scanning the galaxy, routing power from his released physical form, he had become like the dark side itself.

And no extremely shielded stardrive pilot would reach a cache of Jedi before the dark side, no matter how long it would take for Kun's radar thoughts to find them.

**_Close to the Core, not to the once-centers of power..._**


	13. Chapter 13

XIII

Nothing had changed, on the planet or in the Force, when Luke arrived on Coruscant. He had been unable to focus on either Jedi or fighter pilot's techniques for sanity on a spacefaring (and therefor days-long, cramped, boring) journeys; even silence, _especially _ignorance, spread worry out of which chipped only moments or breath-rutine of peace.

Neither Leia nor Tionne had been available any time he made contact.

He settled his craft into its place where someone else in their apartment might have put a few speeders, and caught public transport before 'saber stances took the cramp any amount out of his muscles.

In the Senate halls he could sense no harm, and relaxed in the primary-colored vaulted hallways. _Thank you...they're still safe. We're still safe._

A visiting denizen of Mrlsst requested his signature to bring home to its brood, and just as Luke entered Luke's outer office he felt back to normality keenly. He adopted that look Wedge once teased him about, "Staring into space like an old mystic, not a flyboy", and gently shook wide cloak sleeves down over his hands. People wanted to see this, not panic. Or no--what would they expect from a rejected hero?

"C-3PO. Where's Leia?"

"She'll return from Council in a few standard time units, Master Luke. How _has _your vacation gone?"

Luke laughed a little, at the old droid's endearing/annoying twitchy movements and grimly at his glib phrasing. Luke paced in a circle as he replied, feeling the same relief as he otherwise would have by settling into a chair. "About as calm as our trip into Jabba's palace."

"Oh my!"

"It won't hurt you, now. I don't think. Could you get me any hot chocolate?"

"Certainly, Master Luke."

Leia arrived after Luke reversed his circle and also attained quick mind-contact with Tionne. The teacher's inner self remained unknowing of danger.

Leia took Luke's hands when she swept in, and gazed at him still afraid for his feelings about the Jedi.

"I'm all right." He told her, before anything else was expressed. "An old enemy of the Jedi has found us again, and I can't let Tionne handle it alone. This Dark Lord, I believe he was killed by Jedi, but his spirit has returned."

"Not the emperor!"

"No--older, and with less desire for conquest. I think all he wants is revenge."

She nodded. "There's no reason you can't aid them. Welcome back...I can say that much, right? You aren't going into exile."

He knew her sarcasm and smiled. "Not yet."

They updated on the republic and Lando's venture, and though e did not visit the newborn academy he conformed again to home routine. After a meditation that infused him with the area's safety in the current living Force, if not in the possibilities, he slept deeply.

Only ignorance of Exar Kun's new tactics permitted this.


	14. Chapter 14

_A/N: Sorry that I haven't updated quickly; I'm trying to solve the problem. The one referred to in the story, that is. _

XII

Tionne called her students from their stations with a kind demeanor right between that of a drill sergeant and that of a mother bantha. All of them wore long white tunics and different earthily colored cloaks. They ranged widely; from burly humans Kam Solusar and Gantoris to wispy Streen and the Mon Calamarian Cilghal. A few held lightsabers, most not.

Luke Skywalker found himself pacing before them, stiff and silent not unlike an Imperial officer. Nobility resonated deep within the new Jedi trainees, scuffed still with lack of knowledge, natural darkness, or long youth. Luke felt the orphan teenager Kyp Durron's eyes upon him and thought that he was to late to truly know any of them now.

Did his voice crack and rust in his throat? "You have come far–already. You will begin to change civilizations." Breath. "Feel the Force inside you, and outside you." Now a sighing breath. "I don't really know why I've remained in your presence. I used my powers, the supernatural Force-gift, to form this government along with the senators and soldiers who began the Rebellion. You will use them to form a new Jedi dynasty in partnership with the New Republic."

He stopped and glared out over them, not wanting to appear stone-hard but to fix their faces into his memory, their intrinsic personalities into the grasping cold hands of his mind.

Luke turned on his heel from the short conclave and marched out into the senate annex halls feeling incredibly fake.

_Where has my confidence sapped to? Thoughts cascading;, a pile of machinery tumbling, clattering into the sand. What are the answers? To pain? _The unlinear path of confusions bumped along in its groove and shoved aside any further thought on the failure situation which may or may not have caused them.

_What have I, in all my history and wisdom, learned about coping with failure? Only that time numbs all wounds._

_That to have heroes is to realize that they have faults and are not infinitely confidant either, and then that you have become a hero too sometime in the interim, and that it does not mean you are that much different from another person. That nothing becomes simpler._

_That some will say it's alright to fail (Leia, Wedge) and some will say it's not (Mara Jade, me, Exar Kun) and that I believe both._

_To lean on the Force even when it is only for leaning on, not as partner in warfare._

None of these but the last seemed at all useful.

Master Skywalker had begun to tire of sadness.


	15. Chapter 15

XV

After a long afternoon, night, and then morning, Luke sat beside one of the windows to Coruscant and watched the news. On the wide galactic map, Republic soldiers pushed the Imperial Remnant back in to those systems around Carida. Every battle, every faction, had a romantic name given it by the press, and this felt for some reason sickeningly ironic.

The door chimed and Threepio trundled in with a tray of fruit and blue milk. Scruffy Wedge Antilles jogged after him a second later. While the droid sat the tray in the dining section of the room Wedge nonchalantly went over to Luke's chair.

"Hey, d'you mind if I stop by?"

Luke shook his head.

"So how was the vacation?"

Luke found himself muttering, "It did not end up as a vacation. The sinkholes of Utapau were nice."

"Come on; what's wrong?"

"I've faced bad guys before, Wedge, but something now...is gone. Confidence. And I'm going to face a Sith Lord by myself."

Wedge twitched. "Sith!"

Luke moved; leaned over the chair arm and stared into Wedge, sensing for his strength. "Where does anyone _get _confidence?"

Did Wedge's face pale? "Uhm, you just have to believe in yourself. Know you can do whatever you need to do. You've done plenty impossible things in the past. Just the trench run..."

Luke shook his head. "Not impossible. The Force chose me--now it chose wrong."

"Skywalker, I think you're stuck feeling hopeless."

Luke was not entirely listening. Instead he thought about the Death Sar run, when afterward in the celebration he hadn't felt lessened by supernatural or military aid. He struggled to remember when...

He hadn't had time to think then. Only to act--like Yoda's maxim. _Believe in having confidence..._It was easy to deny that as too simple, cliché, useless to the circular problem.

Was it not _will _which transcended confidence or lack thereof and allowed continued action by the courageous?

Yes. Could _will_ be cultivated? Or only owned?

Whatever its properties, Master Skywalker remembered the workings of willpower.

"What is this about Sith?" Wedge nervously asked.

"I believe only the Jedi need to deal with this now. It is...somewhat phantasmagoric."

"Someone has arrived!" Threepio spoke from the other side of the room.

Luke and the rather shell-shocked Wedge walked calmly to the door. A teenager with long black hair and about Luke's build stood there, wearing a brown Jedi's cloak over a green outfit emblazoned with the Rebellion emblem.

The Force flickered with intense wavelets of danger.

Luke asked, "Good morning. What is it, Kyp Durron?"


	16. Chapter 16

XV

Exar Kun could remember small moments from his life before the gap. The language had changed, the accent and styling and government had changed, but that which reassured the man called Exar Kun had not changed. It could not.

The dark side kept the power to save and control all lives.

Too many times for debt to be dropped had that power preserved Exar himself, or turned things back to his advantage, or showed him how those with a sixth sense improved upon those without.

So amusing how one Sith had devastated the Republic _and _Jedi (with little evidence of saber-shed limbs), until a military rebel government changed the scene again. So much history. Exar had soaked into himself and used and savored the vast perspective he held, how only a very few things--the dark side and its elite followers among them--could survive and make a true mark. Could raise temples and change planets, until their changes were assumed to be ancient and forever by any creature walking among them.

And then of course they were.

Kyp Durron had listened well to the whispering of these truths. It was easy to show (him) the probable failure of Skywalker and his infant complacent Jedi Order.

However, if Exar showed Kyp Durron the core of Master Skywalker's pure prowess, the young man would not consider even walking into this apartment.

Exar did not fear. He held life itself in his own consciousness, and he had forgotten the need for a physical manifestation. It helped to form the illusion of a body, which though a hat-trick mind manipulation was not suited to his current situation. Far easier was honing in on willing Durron's life force and moving with it.

Skywalker needed to be out of the picture before Exar could reform the Sith and the focus temples on Yavin IV to assure his immortality.

One powerful, disheartened, ruined Jedi standing in the Dark Lord's way.

Exar Kun did not fear.


	17. Chapter 17

_I hope you readers enjoy this. This chapter is pretty intense--but please correct me if I get something wrong, and that wrong will most likely occur in my info about Exar Kun's history. The Force's workings are rather tweaked here to facilitate my Plot and also metaphor or allusion, so if you're not sufficiently pulled into the fantasy here then just remember that I think it's not really the Force I'm talking about any more._

XVII

Kyp's energetic spirit dropped from him as a fuzzy bud from an expanding ( poisonous) flower. The dark green cloak hung messily about his shoulders. His eyes were sunken, his sense of confetti of fear, retreat, and strange happiness or satisfaction. Luke sensed a dark taint not native to Kyp's downtrodden and gritty but moral soul.

"You mentioned a new Sith, Master Skywalker."

Luke shook his head. "No I didn't."

"The Sith can hide himself very well, Master Skywalker. He knows where strength lies. Strength which can, like a Jedi could defeat a normal person, defeat the light side ."

"Maybe some warriors of the light side," said Master Skywalker. The wellspring of alien emotion in Kyp Durron gained a face in his mind, and then in his peripheral vision. An aquiline face, with small, even features and old scars as if from claws cutting across the right cheek. A transparent, half-remembered, false face.

The voice billowed like his ash-colored shroud in nonexistent wind or pretended zeal for life. Wedge's unchanging crouch beside the chair reminded Luke that the voice existed only in his thoughts.

"Good day, Master Skywalker." It said. "I have been the scourge of the Jedi, the catalyst of wars, the Master of Ulic Qel-Droma and of Aleema, the creator of the slave Massassi. The dark side controls all life through me. I'm going to get the Jedi out of my way _before _idealistic weaklings challenge my reign and rule. I do not need aid."

The ancient whirlwind gathered itself to leap. All around Kun's speech closed the curtains of ritual, and the standoff became two noble savages proclaiming their lineage for combat.

Luke knew how his own strength peaked with the lightsaber, not with comparable dexterity of the mind. With the forward will of the trench run he opened his thoughts to Kun--to how to...kill? No--to neutralize--to finally send him to the Force.

The curtains, torn, fell and broke among the audience.

Master Skywalker followed his joyous impulse and reached into Exar Kun's memories. He pulled out faces, places, powers and tears. Blue flowers...diggings and scorchings. Mastery and submission; alien and human, and no family at all.

He pulled out strings of influence and life, and they stretched to his lifting hands like slick liquefying plastic.

Exar Kun raised no hands and snatched Luke physically up. _Vertigo, and realization of how the Force connected them. _Luke hurtled backwards and felt the thick glass break around his back, sharp corners falling away from the window designed to cushion speeder crashes. He caught a black ledge outside the apartment and slammed to a stop. Breath came painful at his chest, but his battlecry had saved him and he could pull himself up, gritting his teeth.

_The Force bridged the planes of existence. _Like the shadow of a ghost Kun stood in the window before him again and Luke seized him around the shoulders with Force-power. For a moment it affected him and, Luke stood.

_Ready for more than ever before, now that this level-up hateful opponent is before me._

_He knows to use my material body against me._

"You were wrong about one thing." Luke said. "The dark side does not control life." In the back of his mind the Force flowed through his/its own passion and exultation and justice as he had learned from the light side.

"Certainly it does," said Exar Kun, and the apartment blocks' denizens screamed. Did the other side of the planet crack and pull toward this, as though a black hole had opened in Exar Kun? Pure life energy flowed into it. Did people on the streets look up and stare, or were only the near ones jolted, dropped, terrified on the ride down?

Luke Skywalker suddenly felt faint and tired. He knew no theory or practice of this power._But I love them, and I love the fight--_

Without snap or loss the black hole no longer existed.

'They're mine."

"They're not all yours, Skywalker."

But when another pit opened in the soul-realm and the radius of suffering spread, Luke, feeling faint like eyes-closed-on-stage and the words are coming out all by themselves, rescued them again.

He had the smallest split of a second to wonder how he had done it. Kun _push_ed him again.

Luke let himself fall. The Force rearranged gravity and tore Exar Kun after Skywalker, and it formed flickering fires of solidity around his face and cloak-body.

They stood on glass miles of windows. Luke stared at the blue-gray sky in the distance, and Kun forward into the shadows of Coruscant's stomach. The shadows stretched along the rust-red and silver building-plane to Skywalker's feet, and faintly he glowed with the opposite and epitome of them.

Grins slipped onto their faces at the cleverness of it all.

They were going to be given a showdown.

Spheres of lightning formed through Dark Lord Kun's hands, and juggling them like throwing stars he leapt at Master Skywalker.


	18. Chapter 18

XVIII

The foxfire flew from Kun's hands. Swift!

Luke stepped right, pulled his lightsaber, and deflected the blue tangled nests of energy as he could bullets--slash, lunge. The not-quite-lightening energy crackled and caught along the green lightsaber's length.

Luke rose from the lunge with a fierce smile of unexpected success. He tightened what of his resolve was keeping the pure Force energy occupied with the escaping ions of the lightsaber blade. He took two steps, cocked the blade with the deep buzz next to his right ear, and swung at Exar Kun.

Kun's face exuded the fear of one who has given advantage to his enemy. He drew a long lightsaber haft of his own and leapt away with flourish and grace, but a flicker of--uncertainty, not fear--in his sense.

Beneath Luke's feet through the thick windowpane the Jedi saw people, lying on their sides in the changed gravity, dashing to hide behind their decorated walls. Kun still _knew _them, holding them under a remnant of sway, but he did not own the Force inside them.

"Only final rest will give you any fulfillment now, Dark Lord." said Luke. "You are a ghost."

"I will _live_!" screamed Kun, and he came for Luke with the same tangled energy coursing into curling existence along his own sword, eating up and deleting the blue blade-structure as it activated.

His attacks suddenly stabbed close for Luke. The Jedi stepped back, wrenching his breathing from the brink of shallow. He kept stepping back and making the lightsabers shriek with rare, careful contact.

Now Luke sensed that the borrowed energy in these blades could condemn with touch. The small hairs raised on the back of his neck and his arms. With a mental surge and battlecry he banished thought and snarled. Consciously now he dropped into the Force.

It whispered of where the lightsaber strikes would come and where his feet and balance should work with the geometric terrain on the side of the skyscraper. It whispered of for how long Exar Kun had been a whirlwind through its dark facets.

It screamed of confidence, of rushing-forward, of alone/together.

For a few beating steps they fenced with the lightsabers as if three-fourths of the conflict were not entirely unphysical. But Luke knew how the true battle would be won. He heard only one set of humming, and no clashes. Exar Kun knew too--

Kun reached in to Luke's thoughts and dredged up the fear.

_This is too much for me..._

At the same time Kun got hold of gravity and flung it almost-right.

Luke fell through the broken window of his own apartment and hit the main room's far wall with Kun hurtling down after him, above him, coming closer--

Luke stabbed out and the green-web lightsaber rent the Dark Lord's frame like solar wind through a nebula.

Master Skywalker's willpower and resolve flared into a diamond point which chased the dark spirit around and around the zephyrs of their battle.

Kun gasped in the back of his brain.

Luke cast out to the Force, _How do I defeat this?_

_I send the spirit back to the Force. It would be a service._

On the physical plane, Luke lay slumped against the wall, expression twitching into occasional teeth-bare grimaces.

"I refute you," He whispered. His mind-power shouted and climbed through the metaphysical on the heels of the stab.

Master Skywalker felt himself peeling through layers of time as through the skin of an onion. The tears sparkled in inner-space.

Exar Kun would not die complacent. Even 'now', trapped in his shields of time, he threw lightning of pure emotion at Luke. Rage. Frustration. Yea, jealously poured from a personality which Luke dared not touch as more than _this enemy._

In the parts of his thoughts which he would only review outside the battle, he feared knowing Kun's reasons to fight so long.


	19. Chapter 19

XIX

The pain clips Luke and he does not care. _Now, living, _had overwhelmed Kun's pride in time and death. With Force-armor Master Skywalker wrestles and overthrows. He whispers, "You were given control--over _death only_."

Exar Kun dies in a snap, like the fates' cord cut. The last human emotions he feels are relief and confusion.

_You were given control over death only._

Luke slumped forward into the resumed gravity and breathed deep twice of the very clear-seeming air.

Wedge still had his blaster out. He sat in a curl by the chair by the holoproj with one hand buried in the formfoam. He walked low over to Luke and met his eyes a bit angrily. This was a feat, because he could not know that the enemy was gone and indeed he kept glancing around for some attack.

"It's done," said Luke. "It was not your type of fight...don't concern yourself with understanding."

Wedge grabbed Luke's wrists and pulled him to his feet, surprised at how steady they rose. "I'm gonna get you to Leia! Tell the senator about her mystic brother being thrown around the room by a holo-ghost...blast, this family is _weird_."

Around the corner in the foyer, where they could hear C-3PO rattling around in what sounded like a closet, Luke slipped away from Wedge's grip. "No one else is in danger. He only wanted the Jedi...They're all safe now."

"You killed the ghost?"

Luke nodded or dropped his head.

Threepio clumped swayingly out of a side room, Kyp Durron walking slowly behind him with a humble attitude. "Oh, thank goodness you're all right. I pushed Mr Durron to safety like you ordered, General Antilles, but he keeps professing that the attack is _his _fault. I've called the--"

Luke straightened up. "Hush."

Kyp was conscious and pale. His sense, like a man's soup of emotion running through a separated trough in Luke's head, cascaded with guilt, pride, and surprise. Luke put his right hand on Kyp's shoulder, feeling the severity of his rough cloak and clean hair.

"I see," said Kyp Durron, quietly. "He told me what the dark side could do, and I wanted _power. _My parents, Master Skywalker...but I don't want it to be revenge. Not death."

Luke heard his own voice controlled and low. "It's not your fault. Careful now. You heard what I told him?"

Kyp nodded with lids lowered over fierce eyes.

"You have the power. You'll learn the _judgement_ soon."

Luke raised his eyes and knew that Leia, Tionne, Cilghal, and two government security officers were rushing down the hallway toward the apartment. By the time they arrived Wedge and Kyp knew the quick version of the story of Exar Kun, and Luke sent the security officers---a Twi'lek man and a Drall woman--to be sure there was no panic in the lower apartments.

"You told me you would be okay!" said Leia.

"I _am,_" said Luke. "The problem is over."

"Both of them?"

Wedge said, "You just battled a darksider up and down the building and won. I'd say your confidence should be coming back now, Luke."

Luke smiled and nodded. It was...but perhaps it had been before the battle. "Not without you," he said. "But will the senate accept that?"

_I can't believe it--I can still think about the title Master. _"Or, if..."

"I think they might," said Leia, and she calmly smiled .


	20. Chapter 20

XX

They sat in a circle on the tan-gold floor; Luke, Leia, Kyp, Mara Jade and the others. Around the walls of what was becoming the meditation-and-reception room of the Jedi Academy stood the senior members of the Republic, including Mon Mothma. Lando had gotten in on his 'General Calrission' resume and his sincere winning smile.

Luke, eyes closed and counting breathing, sat in the circle between Leia and Tionne, facing the three windows. The focused sun lay like gentle liquid on his face.

"I've saved you." said Master Skywalker. "I know you felt what tried to claim you. Some residents of my building have now had the pleasure of watching a Jedi fight, Master against Dark Lord, on their walls. One of us here could've been tempted by the dark side too early had the Sith not been looking for whomever led the current Jedi Knights. He thought that was me.

Do you think so?"

The Force-power in the circle was a firm link, even through Leia who was more a conductor than a generator. It was she who had persuaded the government council to reevaluate Luke and the academy. She was a little worried now, that the only presentation he was going to make was that small speech from his circle of fellow supermen. She had explained all they knew about the Sith spirit and how Luke had reconciled himself from disappointment.

She had told Luke these thoughts, and she spread them out into the Force now.

He opened his eyes and the students moved or made small sounds as if waking from sleep.

Mon Mothma said, "You have won a great victory, Luke. Alone and while facing inner demons which, I was told, stemmed in part from my own decision to...to take from you that dream of Jedi which had sustained you through the long wars. I _am sorry_. We, representatives of the Senate, do declare the group before me and the people in it to be the will of the Force and of the Republic; the new Jedi Order, with General and Master Luke Skywalker at its head."

She began to clap and they all clapped; the circle rose to their feet. The audience began to talk among themselves and the formality dissipated. As did the Jedi students, who mostly went out into the hall for the light buffet Leia's aides had prepared. Tionne bowed to Luke, with her hand on her heart and her eyes shining with amusement.

He said, "Thank you."

She said, "Revel in how you belong here. I could only do so much for the academy, with the desire coming often to isolate myself with books."

He talked with her and the politicians for a while, comfortably, about the business of the Jedi Order. Even the legal matters sounded fascinating to his deprive ears.

In a quiet moment, he stood and gazed at the bronze-blue cityscape and thought of what Exar Kun had taught him. it made his gaze switch back to the hall, to the quiet party. He thought about the immediacy of the will of the Force, about the realer-than-life memory of the surreal battle on the tower, and about Kun's sensible delusion. He had been convinced that the dark side saved his life and therefor controlled life, when in fact it only bred death and slavery. Maybe he knew at the end, and saw that vision Luke had glimpsed only afterward--the beauty of his potential for good.

Instead of redemption, the concretion of the new Jedi--and their leader--had resulted.

Luke nodded slightly, as if to the Force itself. Then he went out into the hallways, unafraid of anyone or what subjects they might choose to converse on. The little flare of willpower was like the aliveness of the fight.

The End

_A/N: Well look at that, Mara didn't die. I think the convos between her and Lando aren't done though. Muaha. I hope you the readers enjoyed this fic and maybe learned something...my original problem isn't solved yet. Helped, maybe. I have learned that fanfics are very distracting, and they're at least good for avoiding problems. Review if you want--I usually return them. "MTFBWY"_


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